At the office

Yesterday, as the last hurdle to making our news ‘official’, I had to have a chat with my boss. Apart from actually being in labour, this is probably the worst part of the entire process for me. We were both on vacation at the end of August, and I had actually considered telling him at our monthly one-on-one meeting, which last occurred on my last day of work prior to vacation. Unfortunately, I then found out that the subject of said meeting was my mid-year performance review. Given that I came back to work in March and wasn’t full-time until April, my list of accomplishments for the year was much shorter than it would normally be – and I decided it would be a really dismal time to spring the news. Instead, I spent an additional two weeks full of nerves and was shaking like a leaf by the time I was back in the office on Tuesday. I was prepared to grab him as early in the day as possible just to get it over with… but his calendar was full of back-to-back meetings and he wasn’t at his desk for more than two minutes all day. Thus it was Wednesday before I managed to do it. It went ok I guess (he asked if we were happy about it – as several have done so far, including my dad – I guess if you have kids less than 2 years apart it leads a lot of people to believe that something has happened by accident?) and the relief I felt at having the news out in the open was enormous.

It was not ten minutes later that I was in the washroom on 4th floor, as our 5th floor washrooms are currently out of service, and ran into someone that I don’t see on a regular basis (though I swear that I HAVE seen her at some point during the last six months). Oh, she said, are you back now? It took me a minute to register… you mean back from my maternity leave? And then we got into an entire discussion about maternity leaves and how long they are now compared to how long they used to be. I found it totally ironic that this discussion was occurring on the very day that I was announcing my intention to take a second leave and she was still talking about the first. I didn’t say anything to her about it; I hadn’t told the rest of my immediate department yet, and wasn’t considering it official news until that was done – plus, I think I would have floored her. She ended the conversation by saying she had seen a copy of Liam’s birth announcement and loved it and left with a parting comment about what will I ever do in that regard for (in-her-mind-still-hypothetical) #2.

Hmmm. I’ll have to add that to my to-do list.

(Telling the rest of my coworkers was much easier; a couple boxes of doughnuts and muffins this morning, and they were won over...)

Props go out to www.buycostumes.com, who not only had Liam's Halloween costume here within 4 days, but also somehow managed to skirt the customs office so I was not slapped with any duty or GST. Woot!